Pages

Monday, 29 November 2010

The Actophile Society: Great Yarmouth

For English Heretic: Andy, Dave and Hannah

For K-Punk: Mark, Zoe, George and Michelle

Destination: Great Yarmouth - Louis Tussaud's House Of Wax, Regent Street and Promenade.

Great Yarmouth is one of my favourite places. I first visited it about 10 years ago with my then wife Helen and our son Dave. Helen had just found out she was pregnant with Hannah and was suffering really bad morning sickness. So it didn't help that we booked into the seediest hotel, serving the most gelatinous minestrone soup and salads lubricated with a homemade dressing - of a consistency more David Lynch than Paul Newman. The hotel proprietors were Harry and Terry. Terry was a muscular middle aged Geordie who did a drag routine on a Tuesday evening in the exquisitely uncomfortable and bijoux lounge bar. On the wall of the stairwell leading to the bedrooms, there was a photograph of Terry - dressed as a mermaid. Still, it remains one of our favourite holidays - like being in a George Kuchar film...

Recently I've been pondering a new kind of psychogeography - one for the family, after all every coordinate of pretension and speculation has been annexed by some flavour of the 'art'. The Society Of The Actophile is therefore a natural extension. A play on Bataille's esoteric cult of revolutionary sacrifice - The Actophile makes an apotheosis of the beach and, by extrapolation, a religion of leisure. Whilst this conceit is obviously bathed in lazy irony, Actophilia has real potential. It's where the situationist disciples of the ludic revolution go on a day out, more charabanc than Left Bank.

As a place for praxis, the beach itself is a clean talisman, waiting for dead seals to be drawn upon it and jetsammed to the subconscious of the next tide.

One only need look at the revved up world of Jeff Keens, the terminal sands of JGB, the incubal revenants of M.R. James' Burnstow and, the hints of R'lyeh at Dunwich to know that seaside psychogeography represents the most powerful frontier between what is known and a queasy occult: where the relics of a hideous pre-historical weekend break are washed up as the future's lagan.

Louis Tussaud's House Of Wax

Plan For The Assassination Of Princess Ann

The Ultimate Power Electronics Supergroup: Eichmann on laptop; Black Panther on beaters; Manson on vocals and Beads